


Orpheus Rising

by nerddowell



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky is Eurydice, Canon Era, I have taken several liberties with the myth, M/M, Nobody stays dead, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Peggy is Persephone, Romance, Steve is Orpheus, Tragedy, and Steve kind of goes to the underworld to save him, as usual I am narrating my entire life story in the tags, but hopefully this is okay anyway, how do I tag this?, i'm sorry guys, in that Bucky still falls off the train and sort-of dies, it's gay as fuck, or totally does that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: Bucky’s fall seems to last hours until the snow – cruel, cold, sharp against his skin – envelops his body and the fragile light breaking through the clouds of the Alps winks out into black emptiness, and Steve’s name dies on his lips.





	Orpheus Rising

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely self-indulgent trash written at 4am and therefore unbeta'ed, so all mistakes are my own. And I'm an idiot, so there'll probably be loads. Sorry.

πάντα δὲ καλὰ θανόντι περ ὅττι φανήῃ

Death can find nothing to expose in him  
that is not beautiful.

– Homer, _Iliad_ 22.73

No grave can hold my body down  
I’ll crawl home to her  
– Hozier

 

 

Bucky’s fall seems to last hours until the snow – cruel, cold, sharp against his skin – envelops his body and the fragile light breaking through the clouds of the Alps winks out into black emptiness, and Steve’s name dies on his lips.

He awakens in a cold sweat, his body aching, to a grey, mountainous landscape and a long road edged with dried-up ferns and rushes. Thunder rumbles overhead, rolling and crashing between the twin peaks of the mountains on the horizon like a ball bearing in a tin can. He tries to call out, but his voice has no sound over the screaming of the wind; it tears at his clothes, the ragged remains of his blue rifleman’s jacket, and whips his loose hair against his face. He looks around for someone – anyone – to ask exactly what the hell is goin’ on, and sees nobody. There’s no sign of life, not even in the vegetation on the ground, which is as parched as a nun’s cunt, and nothing but the mountains and the road.

So he sets one foot in front of the other, and he walks.

 

* * *

 

Steve drowns his sorrows in the bottom of a glass, and, for the first time, curses the restorative powers of the serum. Right now, he wants nothing more than to get good and drunk, and instead he’s denied the blissful numbing properties of the alcohol he’s been pouring down his throat. He’s horribly, painfully sober and aware, and grieving his best friend and lover. He remembers Bucky’s chaste kiss behind an outcropping of rock before they took the zip line onto the train; remembers the thud of his heart, still beating, against Steve’s back as he covered his exit from the carriage. Remembers the stretch of his hand, so close to the tips of Steve’s fingers, and the grate of rending metal before the scream, already falling away before Steve’s ears had chance to register it. The sight of him dwindling in the distance, nothing more than snow and a smear of tears over Steve’s cheek.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s footsteps are heavy on the pathway cut into the side of the mountain, crunching scree beneath the soles of his boots. He’s still alert, eyes quick over the path ahead and ears pricked for the sounds of anything other than the howling wind and peal of thunder. There’s a bridge ahead, an arch of natural rock over a fast-flowing black river, roiling with grey foam in rapids; at the near end of the bridge, a figure stands, still as a statue. Bucky shouts – still soundless – and waves his arms, but the figure doesn’t turn around, nor even turn its head.

He breaks into a run as he approaches, and finds himself in front of a tall, shrouded man with a thick and untidy beard. He opens his hand as Bucky arrives in front of him, like a New York bellboy waiting for a tip, and Bucky stares incredulously at him. A _toll_ for crossing a bridge that looks like it could collapse any fuckin’ second?

The figure is implacable, hand still outstretched, and Bucky curses silently, as creatively as he can manage, and slams a nickel down in the palm of the man’s hand. The man’s lips curve up into a smile beneath his beard, and Bucky specifically doesn’t think about how it’s exactly the same sort of smile as a hungry shark’s as he crosses the bridge.

 

* * *

 

Steve wakes the next morning without even the slightest trace of a hangover to show for the impressive amounts of alcohol he imbibed last night. Instead, he wakes with the heavy realisation of Bucky’s absence still hanging over his head like Damocles’ sword, and he stumbles into his briefing still in shock. The Colonel, the Commandos, everyone is waiting for him, and the room is full of eyes tracing the bags under his eyes and the downturned corners of his mouth even as he throws his sharpest salute.

The Commandos do their best to soothe; even Colonel Phillips offers a heavy hand on the shoulder and a sombre, uncharacteristic platitude, but neither even begins to touch the raw, aching hole in Steve’s chest. He accepts the mission immediately, storming the Hydra base with little more than his bare hands, and breaks open the doors of the Hydra stronghold with his shield before storming towards the laboratories, fire in his blood.

 

* * *

 

Bucky, wherever he is, can also see fire. It rages beneath his feet, miles below the stone walkway zigzagging through the cavernous cave he finds himself in. Here, small white flowers grow in the cracks between the flagstones of the paths, and there’s a cloying, heavy scent of lilies in the air and the faint hubbub of voices, like static from a radio in another room. The place is cold despite the inferno beneath; he shivers in the ruins of his jacket but keeps walking.

He comes, eventually, to an enormous gate set in a wall so high he can hardly see the top, guarded by a Dobermann and the twin to the creepy figure from the bridge. This man steps aside for Bucky with no palms needing to be greased, however, which he counts as a good thing. There’s a building in the distance, at the corner of the wall, the first building he’s seen for what feels like miles. The path is bordered with more of the flowers, interspersed with woody stalks of giant fennel and orchids of every colour. The thought of how much Steve would have stopped to draw the delicate petals of each plant strikes him, and Bucky bends to pluck one from the wayside.

The flower recoils, withering away beneath his fingers, and he startles as the huge bronze doors of the building swing open with a crash.

 

* * *

 

Steve sees his chance in the hangar below the labs. Leaping from the speeding car, he swings himself aboard the Hydra plane, tackles the agents aboard, and heads for the main cockpit. The Skull is waiting for him despite all of his hard work to retain the element of surprise, and there’s a brawl – brief, but bloody, and not without the serious risk of being atomised by whatever weapons Hydra has created for its mastermind – before he seizes control and sends the whole plane spiralling towards the icy expanse of the North Atlantic without a thought for anyone but Bucky, to whom he is returning.

 

* * *

 

Steve finds himself on a path through the mountains, and there’s an almost glowing tread leading him along the road. He follows it without question, on autopilot; barely taking in his surroundings until he is led up the side of a mountain and onto a promontory of rock leading to a huge stone bridge guarded by a cloaked figure. The moment he sees Steve, he extends a hand, barring Steve’s passage over the bridge.

‘Let me through.’

‘You are not for this realm, mortal.’

‘I’m goin’ past. Whether it’s through you or not.’

The man bares his teeth in what’s probably meant to be a smile. Steve, forcibly reminded of the guys who used to whale on him in Brooklyn when he was small enough to be pushed around so easily, instantly gears himself up for a fight. The man cocks his head curiously like a spaniel trying to tip water out of its ear, shivers – a full-body spasm that rocks his skeletal frame – and, miraculously, steps aside.

‘Show myself out, shall I?’ Steve bites out as he shoulders his way past, and ploughs over the bridge.

 

* * *

 

After a time, he finds himself at the doors of a black marble palace, taller and grander even than the White House (or, from what he’s seen of the White House in photos, anyway). Grandly carved pillars hold up marble cornices, torches burn green on the walls, and the doors are bronze, burnished to a gleam so bright it’s nearly blinding, even in the dim light. The doors open of their own accord, it seems, and he walks into a cavernous open hallway, a pool of black water in the middle of the floor, and sees a woman sat at its side, dipping her bare feet into the water.

She stands, graceful as a dancer, and turns to face him. She’s easily the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, with liquid, long-lashed brown eyes and pomegranate-red lips. She smiles, offers him her hand, and – unsure of what else to do – he shakes it. She seems to find it amusing.

‘I know why you’re here,’ she says, in a cut-glass accent that could pass for British, and pushes a loose curl behind her ear.

‘You do, ma’am?’ he asks, remembering his manners. ‘I sure don’t.’

‘The real question,’ she says, walking around the side of the pond, ‘is how you got in.’

‘Past the guard at the bridge,’ he says honestly, and she shakes her head.

‘Dear, dear. We shall have to have a little word with him, I think.’ She fixes Steve with a gaze that’s suddenly as hard and unforgiving as the marble beneath her delicate feet. ‘The living are not usually permitted in the realm of Hades.’

‘I’ve no idea who that is, ma’am,’ he tells her, as politely as he can manage.

‘Oh, you don’t?’ She seems affronted, her eyes narrowing. ‘Then you’ve never heard of me, either?’

‘With all due respect, ma’am,’ Steve points out, ‘you’ve not told me your name.’

‘My name is Kore,’ she says, ‘and Despoina, and many besides. Yours, Steve Rogers, I have no need to ask.’ She glares at him. ‘What you seek is here, but unlike you, he cannot rejoin the living.’

‘You’re holdin’ Bucky here?’ Steve asks, his heart thumping in his chest. ‘Where?’

‘In the Asphodel Fields, with the rest of his kind.’

Steve’s eyes narrow. ‘His kind?’

‘Mortals. Unremarkable, indifferent. Dead.’

Steve snorts. ‘We’re talkin’ about the same Bucky?’

‘Every mortal believes their _philtatos_ to be different. To deserve different. Your… Bucky… has been judged, and placed in the Asphodel Fields, as befits a man of his standing.’

Steve shakes his head fervently. ‘Not Bucky. Bucky is…’ He trails off, unsure of how to continue. How could he cram the entirety of the sun into the palm of his hand? ‘Bucky is the best man I know.’

‘Nothing I have not heard before a thousand times, mortal. ‘O dread Kore, save my husband/lover/son/delete as appropriate’.’ She rolls her perfect brown eyes. ‘‘I have travelled to the realm of Hades to plead for his shade to be released to me, and out of the love and respect I bear yourself and Lord Plouton, I beg that you grant my wish.’’

‘I’m not begging,’ Steve tells her flatly. ‘Bucky’s not a chip to be bargained over. I don’t care who you are, he’s not mine and he sure as hell ain’t yours.’ He rolls his shoulders, staring her down. ‘If you want one of us, take me.’ His voice goes soft, quiet. ‘There’s nothin’ for me without him anyway.’

She stares at him for several agonising seconds before her face cracks into another sharp, amused smile.

‘You do not fear me, truly.’ The concept seems novel to her, and she ponders for a moment. ‘He is precious to you, as all mortals are to one another. The offer of an exchange intrigues me. However,’ she says, and turns those spellbinding brown eyes back onto Steve, ‘I cannot release him from the Underworld. The Fates have severed the thread.’

‘I’ll take him myself,’ Steve snaps, patience wearing thin.

She laughs. ‘Very well, mortal. A wager.’ She smiles at him. ‘Find him in the Fields, and you may take him back. You will have him whole and hearty again, I swear upon the Styx. But you must take him, and lead him out of the Ivory Gate, and you may not look back until you are both across the threshold. To look back is to lose him again, and I shall not be so accommodating a second time.’

Steve sets his jaw and answers with a sharp nod. ‘Ma’am.’

She waves him away, and he can feel her amused eyes on the back of his neck the whole way.

 

* * *

 

The Asphodel Fields, Steve soon discovers, are endless. The widest of open spaces, knee-deep in star-shaped white flowers and only the gentlest of breezes to stir the petals, under a star-studded sky like diamonds pressed into crushed black velvet. People, listless and blurred around the edges, drift between the flowers, paying him not a moment’s notice as he darts between them, glimpsing each face for only a second before moving on. He is only dimly aware of how much time must be passing as he searches and searches, and there’s no sign of Bucky anywhere.

He calls Bucky’s name over and over, but none of the wispy, dreamlike figures give any indication of having heard, or even registered his presence. Desperation growing, Steve threads his way among them towards a bower of asphodel in the middle of the field, to sit at the pool of water it sheltered and consider a plan, seeing as tearing through the field wildly screaming Bucky’s name had yielded no results.

A ripple in the water catches his eye, and a flash of gold makes him startle. He stirs the pool again with the tip of his toe, and sees – clear as daylight – Bucky’s face, eyes closed as though fast asleep, at the bottom of the pool. Steve doesn’t think, simply dives into the water, and kicks as hard as he can for the bottom.

But it isn’t that easy.

Bucky seems to shrink away from him the further down he dives, until even the bright light of the stars from the Fields are completely blacked out in the depths. Steve continues to fight his way deeper as even his super-soldier muscles grow tired, his lungs screaming for him to take a breath; he keeps on until every last ounce of strength has been sapped from his body and he slips away into darkness, as weak as though he’d never taken the serum at all.

 

* * *

 

He comes to once again in Kore’s palace, draped over the shallow steps by the pool in the entrance, a hand combing through his wet hair. Coughing water out of his burning lungs, Steve drags himself upright weakly, shaking the hand away, to see Kore herself, tears on her cheeks.

‘I underestimated you, mortal,’ she tells him. ‘To dive to the endless depths of Oceanos…’

Steve can barely speak, so he just nods. ‘Told you,’ he manages, ‘best man I know.’

‘He must be a treasure,’ Kore says softly, and she holds out a small, golden pearl. Steve glances at her, confused, before taking it, turning it over between his fingers. It’s warm, like a marble kept in a pocket, and sparkles under the light. Kore takes it from his hands and lets it roll into the water, and from the pool climbs Bucky, bright-eyed and as beautiful as Steve has ever seen him. He takes Steve’s hand wordlessly.

‘Go,’ Kore tells them.

Steve needs no further encouragement.

 

* * *

 

The path out of the Underworld is as gloomy as the entrance, though much flatter; it trickles through wide fields of wildflowers with the meandering route of a lazy river, and Steve constantly reminds himself not to look back. The temptation grows with every step, but he forces himself to be content with the warm weight of Bucky’s hand in his and with Kore’s promise that as long as he doesn’t look, Bucky will remain with him every step of the way.

The Ivory Gate looms in the distance, illuminated with brilliant sunlight from the other side, making Steve’s heart skip a beat. They’re so close.

As they near the gate, he breaks into a jog, and then a run, and he can hear Bucky’s shambling steps behind him trying to keep up. He pulls him along, a child with a favourite toy, until he’s just about to burst through the gate – and Bucky’s hand slips from his.

Steve almost turns to look, but forces himself to keep running until he can feel the sun, brilliant and blazing, on his face, and can hear the sounds of birdsong in the air and the whisper of a breeze ruffling the leaves of nearby trees. He waits for as long as he can bear, closing his eyes, bracing himself –

And turns to meet the glorious, shining blue-grey of Bucky’s eyes, the warmth of his cheek against Steve’s, and the press of his lips against his own, strong arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that Steve almost can’t breathe, and he tangles a hand in Bucky’s hair and kisses back so fiercely it hurts. Bucky breaks away after a long time, panting, but doesn’t let go of him, instead sliding one hand down to lace their fingers together, staring at Steve as though he’s hung the moon.

‘You didn’t look.’

‘I didn’t need to,’ Steve murmurs. ‘I’m with you ’til the end of the line.’

**Author's Note:**

> Who wants a really cool [map of the Greek underworld](http://www.maicar.com/GML/Underworldmap.html)?
> 
> Greeks were, like, not supposed to call Persephone (or Hades, come to think of it) by her/his name EVER, because that would essentially bring her (i.e. death) down on them and their household, so they made up a bunch of euphemistic names for them, including but not limited to: Plouton (Plentiful, wealthy), and Zeus Khthonios (Zeus under the Earth); and Kore (maiden), Despoina (the mistress), Praxidike (Subterranean queen).
> 
> P.S. I made this [a graphic on Tumblr](http://translorastyrell.tumblr.com/post/174316048042/stucky-au-3-greek-myths-orpheus-eurydice) which you should totally check out too.


End file.
